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Saturday, 29 January 2011

Here's a startling statistic from Sen. Tom Coburn, quoted by Peggy Noonan in the weekend WSJ:

"The federal government is twice the size

it was 10 years ago.

It's 27% bigger than it was two years ago."

And the Repubs are talking about cutting back to a 2008-level of spending? How about cutting the entire federal government back by half? Everyone can remember ten years ago, because of 9/11. Did you hear anyone complaining back then that the government wasn't big enough?

CHARLESTON - The chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party thinks the state should join 27 others in suing the federal government over the health care overhaul that has been dubbed "Obamacare."

But the state's chief deputy AG says the office doesn't have the power to join the suit.

"More than half of state governments have taken legal action against Obamacare," Mike Stuart said. "The House (U.S. House of Representatives) has now voted to repeal Obamacare. Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and twenty-four other states have joined together to challenge the Constitutionality of Obamacare but not West Virginia."

Stuart called on the state Legislature and leaders of both political parties to pass a non-binding resolution demanding that state Attorney General Darrell McGraw join 27 other states in the suit.

"Citizens of all political parties, working families, and all West Virginians will pay a heavy price if Obamacare is allowed to stand as the law of the land," Stuart said.

"Our state budget will explode, and West Virginians will face much higher taxes if we fail to join our neighbors and a majority of states in trying to stop this terrible federal encroachment."

... this president is my cousin. But as a physician who took an inviolate oath to my patients, I am duty-bound to take this stand, particularly after watching Barack Obama make so many unkeepable Obamacare promises:

c Obamacare would reduce our deficit. We were to believe that millions of Americans would be added to the insurance rolls, that medical care would not suffer, and somehow, almost magically, costs would go down. We might as well promise it will never rain on weekends. Gravity caught up to this wishful thinking, and even the president’s own actuary now admits the overhaul will increase, not decrease, the deficit.

c Obamacare would allow you to keep your doctor and your current insurance. How can you keep your doctor if your doctor can’t keep his practice? The New England Journal of Medicine reported a survey that showed nearly half of America’s doctors are being forced to consider leaving their practice if Obamacare is implemented. And businesses already are finding they can no longer provide the same insurance policies to their employees that they had before Obamacare. Oklahoma’s Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, also a physician, estimates 90 million Americans will lose their current insurance policies because of the takeover. Millions of them will be forced into Medicaid and government exchanges.

c Obamacare would not jeopardize senior citizens’ care. The continued viability of Medicare Advantage is in serious jeopardy because of Mr. Obama’s Medicare cuts to pay for other parts of his health care overhaul. Companies already are announcing that they can no longer offer this very popular free-market Medicare reform. What’s more, fewer doctors are able to accept Medicare patients with the downward pressure on reimbursement levels, currently stuck at 1980s levels. Too often, physicians’ practices cannot survive being in business with the federal government. Already, 42 percent of doctors do not accept Medicare, and that number is increasing. Your shiny government-issued Medicare card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

c Obamacare would not ration health care. The president promised time and time again that he would not ration health care, and then promptly, under the cloak of a recess appointment, installed as the head of Medicare a man who would do it for him. Dr. Donald Berwick has announced unambiguously and with glee many times over that he will indeed ration America’s medical care (in addition to his own bizarre promises to redistribute your wealth) but he assures us that he’s our intellectual better, so it will be fine. He also declares he’s “romantic” about the British-government-run system and specifically admires how the British purposefully undersupply medical needs to alleviate “bottlenecks.” They’ve been alleviated all right. Britain’s colon cancer mortality rate, for example, is 40 percent higher than America’s; breast cancer 88 percent higher; prostate cancer a staggering 604 percent higher. All those unnecessary deaths unburden the system of patients seeking care. Some might call this rationing. Mr. Berwick, by the way, created his own health care golden parachute to assure that he and his wife would never be forced to submit themselves to the Medicare rules he creates. How convenient.

c Obamacare would not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year.

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

New excise taxes on pharmaceuticals and medical products will, of course, by necessity be passed on to the patients who depend on these lifesaving medicines, pacemakers, MRI machines or even tongue depressors. Even more flagrant, there are new Obamacare taxes on everything from tampons to tanning salons, from gold to the sale of your home.

c Obamacare would create 4 million new jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. Not to be outdone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added this grand promise of her own. However, since the health care takeover was signed into law, no such jobs boom has occurred.

c Obamacare hearings would be held in public. Unlike the other promises, this one could have been kept and in fact may have prevented all these other catastrophic failures, but sadly, it was wantonly ignored by this president. Candidate Obama pledged eight times to hold health care hearings in public. Invite the C-SPAN cameras, he said, because open hearings would allow Americans to know who was on their side. Indeed it would have.

You might want to read it all -- and perhaps print & send to WV AG Darrell McGraw.

I'm torn... between ignoring the hate-filled Left (that is, not giving them any more oxygen than they've already sucked out of the system) and on the other hand, exposing these sewer rats by name and face and calling them out for their ew-dirty nasty vile commentary. In this morning's interior struggle, the latter has won out (which is not to say that I've chosen correctly).

From Don Surber, with a "language warning. If you are under 18, go some other place to read."

.... It is time for a bolder, more assertive "Borders and Security First" approach aimed at fulfilling President Obama's campaign promise of achieving a two-state solution.‬

The world knows the outlines of the solution. So it is time for the United States – with broad international support – to put forward a real proposal for ending the conflict in which the parties are asked to give yes-or-no answers. ‬

‪ ‬‪The proposal should make clear that the border will be based on the 1967 lines, creating a Palestinian state on the equivalent of 100 percent of the land beyond the 1967 Green Line with one-to-one, agreed-upon land swaps.‬ It must also meet the full range of Israeli security needs in the face of the threats it faces.

Shades of Erekat (the Arabs' chief "negotiator"), whose position is/was that “anything short of 2 states on the 1967 border is meaningless.”

Now anytime someone mentions 1967 lines or borders, ask them which day, which month, in 1967. Before or After... the Six Days?

The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians - who hold our throat in their hands - in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history.

- Abba Eban in Der Spiegel, November 5, 1969

Eban's characterization of Israel's "Auschwitz borders" is now 36 [41] years old, and relatively few people remember the Six Day War. Nowadays one is just as likely to hear it referred to as the "1967 Middle East War," apparently from politically-correct deference to Arab feelings, for after only six days of fighting vastly outnumbered Israeli forces were in position to march on Cairo, Damascus and Amman.

Before the war started, however, such a victory was anything but certain. Israel in 1967 was isolated, not even twenty years a state, and subject to dire provocation, threats and hostile actions by surrounding Arab countries....

Tell me if I'm wrong, but the so-called "1967 Green Line," referenced and vaunted by J Street, is nothing other than the demarcation of Armistice lines set out in 1949.

In other words, J Street proposes reinstatement of the Auschwitz borders so eloquently described by Abba Eban, and follows up with a worthless caveat about Israel's "security." One can only asusme that they wish to appear less deviant than their ideological predecessors.

From Bibi's address to the Knesset on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (via Jewish Current Issues):

Have the lessons of the Holocaust been learned?

For us, the Jewish people, the answer is yes.For the rest of the world, the answer is no, or at least not yet.

Today, 66 years after the horror, we are here, in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of our nation. We, the representatives of the Jewish nation, are holding a special ceremony to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The lesson that we have learned, first of all, is that we are here, in our sovereign country, in our capital city.

We have learned another important lesson, probably the most crucial lesson to be learned from the atrocity, from the chain of atrocities that brought about one much worse; this has continued for hundreds and thousands of years, since we lost our country and our sovereignty, and since we lost our capability to defend ourselves. The lesson learned was that we had to restore the capacity of the State and the army for self-defense....

Palin's characterization of the Left's appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a "blood libel," was entirely accurate.

Moreover, as her previous use of the term "death panels," in the healthcare debate brought clarity to an issue the Left sought to obscure, so her use of the term "blood libel," exposed the nature of the Left's behavior and highlighted its intentions....

.... What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the US and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in the US in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over Leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.

Amen. And kudos to both women.

Plus - Hot Spit! Caroline used a photo of Palin taken by The Husband, right here in West-byGD-Virginia. Small world :)

Thursday, 27 January 2011

.... Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened... Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many -- and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries... These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights...."

Don't hold your breath waiting for CAIR, Keith Ellison or Barack Hussein Obama to condemn this. After all, to do so would insult the Muslim "prophet" (for more, see 7th Century, Golden Age of Islam or Dark Ages).

TALIBAN SPOKESMAN: "Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law. There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet..."

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

Horrific video footage has emerged of Taliban insurgents stoning a couple to death for alleged adultery in northern Afghanistan.

Hundreds of villagers can be seen on the video standing around as the woman, Siddqa, is buried up to her waist in a four foot hole in the ground.

Two mullahs pass sentence before the crowd begins to throw rocks at her head and body as she desperately tries to crawl free.

But the 19-year-old collapses to the ground, covered in blood - but miraculously still alive.

At this point a Taliban fighter shoots her three times in the head with an AK-47The crowd can be heard shouting allahu akbar as she is killed....

BAGHDAD – Two U.S. troops were killed Saturday by an Iraqi soldier who apparently smuggled real bullets into a training exercise and opened fire, raising fresh concerns about insurgents worming into the nation’s security forces as the Americans prepare to leave by the year’s end.

A U.S. military official said the shooter was immediately killed by American soldiers who were running the morning drill at a training center on a U.S. base in the northern city of Mosul. The U.S. official said the exercise was not meant to involve live ammunition, and an Iraqi army officer said the shooting appeared to have been planned.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. A U.S. statement confirmed that two soldiers were killed and a third was wounded by small-arms fire by what the military described as “an individual wearing an Iraqi army uniform.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped 51,000 to a seasonally adjusted 454,000, the highest since late October, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the largest weekly increase since September 2005. The rise exceeded economists' expectations for a slight gain to 405,000.